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A friend of our's is a retired firefighter and now an avid fisherman. He enjoyed seeing all of my bird drawings, and kept telling me I should draw a Chinook Salmon, which is a fish that is near and dear to the Pacific Northwest. So he sent me a picture and I got to drawing. I'll tell the rest of the story mostly through pictures . . .  I like to fill in the eye first thing so it starts looking alive right away.
 At this point I could have been done and had a perfectly fine salmon drawing, but I wasn't quite satisfied. It needed a little something extra. I felt inspired by this image that I found on Pinterest.  And landed with this.  I still can't decide if the interior swirls are pretty or just messy, I might work with them some more.... or maybe I don't need to decide. Maybe I just need to move on. Or maybe the next step is to bring it onto my iPad and add some digital watercolor. I did that with my iguana this past weekend.
I do like salmon better now though, with the pattern added. It made it more mine.
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I don't know how this happened, but I have become the type of person that reads like, five books at once. I used to always have one fiction and one non-fiction going, but that system has flown out the window the last couple of years. I'm currently in the midst of 5 books. Here they are in no particular order....
I blame the app GoodReads for this new habit of reading 4-5 books at a time. Since I can easily keep track of what I'm reading and how far I'm in a book with GoodReads, I feel comfortable being in the midst of a lot at once. And I also just decide not to be in a rush to finish.  But since this blog is supposed to be somewhat focused on art and not on literature, I thought I'd share some inspiration from Elizabeth's Gilbert book. I've mentioned it before, and I'm still s-l-o-w-l-y reading it. I really like this quote. It's kinda long, but so lovely.... "Making art does sometimes feel like you're holding a seance, or like you're calling out in the night for a wild animal on the prowl. What you're doing seems impossible and even silly, but then you hear the thunder of hooves, and some beautiful beast comes rushing into the glade, searching for you just as urgently as you have been searching for it. So you must keep trying. you must keep calling out in those dark woods for your own Big Magic. You must search tirelessly and faithfully, hoping against hope to someday experience that divine collision of creative communion--either for the first time, or one more time. Because when it all comes together, it's amazing. When it all comes together, the only thing you can do is bow down in gratitude, as if you have been granted an audience with the divine. Because you have." -Gilbert i love that! A lot of times spending time to create does feel silly and fruitless and like I'd be making better use of my limited free time by cleaning out my car or taking a shower. It's easy to forget those times when it does feel like magic, or to think that it won't ever feel like magic again. But for now, I'm just going to keep showing up.  |
LauraA place to share the process. A space to be honest about the triumphs and trials of my daily life as an artist and mama. Writing motivates and refreshes me. Archives
July 2023
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